October 2005
Intermediate to advanced
488 pages
17h 4m
English
Content preview from Open Sources 2.0Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 5. Dual Licensing
Michael Olson
Over the past decade, there have been many attempts to commercialize open source software. One common strategy has been to create services businesses, which offer consulting and support to users of open source. Another strategy has been to build hybrid businesses, which distribute open source platforms with proprietary add-ons, and which make money by licensing the add-ons.
A third strategy, and the focus of this chapter, is called dual licensing. Companies that use dual licensing provide a single software product under two different licenses. One license, which imposes open source terms, is available to a certain class of users. A second license, with proprietary terms, is available to others.
Business and Politics
This chapter is about business. Software is deep in the modern economy: it provides the mechanism for the flow of capital around the world, and it is itself a good that can be produced, bought, and sold. Whenever something interesting happens in the world of software, business leaders pay attention.
Open source is interesting. It enforces new rules for use and distribution of software products. It changes the economics of software production. It impacts the way that companies can capitalize on the software they control.
At the same time, though, open source has no business agenda. Open source is about freedom in the political sense. It is about peer review and scientific collaboration. Open source licenses take no position whatsoever ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.